On the opening day of the Portuguese Grand Prix, held under tricky weather conditions, Fabio Di Giannantonio secured direct access to Q2 with seventh place, while Franco Morbidelli finished twelfth.
The Autodromo Internacional do Algarve welcomed MotoGP’s return to Europe with unstable weather, but the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team kicked off the penultimate round of the season in a positive way thanks to Fabio Di Giannantonio’s direct Q2 entry, ending Friday in seventh place. Franco Morbidelli will go through Q1 after finishing in twelfth position, following a crash that fortunately had no physical consequences.
It was a strong start to the weekend for Di Giannantonio, who showed competitiveness and solid pace already from FP1. In the Practice, the rain made conditions difficult, but Fabio managed to improve his lap times: with the final seventh place (1:38.302), the #49 rider gained a direct Q2 spot.
Morbidelli also started the day strongly, finishing FP1 close to the leading positions. However, an early crash at Turn 13 during Practice affected his session. Even though he was ok with no physical consequences, the #21 rider missed out on the Top10. He was eleventh (1:38.597) at the end of Friday, so he will go through Q1.
The Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team is back on track on Saturday for qualifying, which begins at 10:50 a.m. (local time, -1 CET). The Sprint race will follow at 3:00 p.m. (local time). The Portuguese Gran Prix will end on Sunday with the main race, that will start at 1 p.m. (local time, -1 CET).
FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO
“I’m happy because today we made an excellent plan for the day to really understand which direction to take and to overcome the difficulties we’ve had this year in setting up the bike to push right from the start. The plan worked: with direct access to Q2 we achieved our Friday goal, and we also have a quite clear idea about which tyres to use. We did a great job in the garage, and the performance was strong too, I’m not far from the top guys. We’re working to further improve confidence with the front to optimize the corner entry.”
FRANCO MORBIDELLI
“After a normal morning where everything was going well, things were complicated and everything changed in the Practice. At the beginning of the session, I crashed unexpectedly, it was really strange. We lost a lot of time, and that didn’t help us. We struggled throughout the session, but with the new tyres I was very close to going straight into Q2, even though the feeling wasn’t great. Unfortunately, we missed out by a tenth. We need to work on the setup to achieve tomorrow’s goal, which is to get into Q2 and fight in every condition.”
